Engineering graduate takes road less travelled as mobile mechanic

AMMAN — A fresh graduate on the lookout for a job for months, a 29-year-old Jordanian mechanical engineer charted his own path towards an unconventional career: A mobile mechanic.

Ahmad Al Momani launched his own business project called “Your Mechanic at Your Door” to provide periodical maintenance for hybrid and modern gasoline cars, according to his website.

“If someone’s car breaks down or they need to do a quick checkup either at home, at work, or while they’re driving somewhere and suspect that there’s something wrong, they just give me a call and I drive up to them with the needed tools,” Momani told The Jordan Times.

After he earned his bachelor’s degree in 2017, Momani was unemployed for five months, and eventually got a job as a salesperson. 

“I had no luck finding something in my area of specialty; there were thousands of mechanical engineers and very few jobs,” he said, noting that getting the sales job wasn’t easy either.

“I sent out four or five CVs a day to the same company until they hired me, but it wasn’t the right job for me, so I left a year later,” Momani said.

After five more months of unemployment, his interest in cars and the scarcity of jobs led Momani to take on an unconventional path as a mobile mechanic. 

“I was always curious as a kid about the different parts of a car and what each of them did. Whenever my dad took his car to the mechanic I’d tag along and he’d let me see what the mechanic was doing,” he said.

Before launching his own project by the end of 2019, Momani worked at a garage for a whole year, without receiving any pay, to learn about mechanics first-hand.

“I also earned a diploma in hybrid and modern gasoline cars’ maintenance while I was working there,” he said. 

Momani started with doing small repairs for friends and family.

“I would examine the car then let them know what tools I needed to make the necessary repairs and they’d get them for me as my pay, until I had enough tools to do simple repairs on most cars and gradually grew my project,” he said.

Momani also noted that under these tough economic circumstances, one should go out and try whatever is available without giving into “the culture of shame”.

“Keep looking until you find yourself in something, and when you do, it will feel great,” he said.